About Us

Hobarts has been around in various different guises since 1989. Initially, operating in the City of London and working for the Government on several privatisation issues and a number of high profile take-overs and mergers. In 1996, the business moved to Kent and set up its acrylic manufacturing operation.

In the summer of 2000, the company started selling lasers and have steadily gained a reputation for supplying good quality, reliable equipment to education and industry.

Our philosophy is to provide the best machinery backed up with first class training and followed by excellent after-sales support. We are well known for having the best trained technicians in the business with regular in-house courses to keep abreast of product development and training at the manufacturer’s facilities in Vienna and Scottsdale, Arizona.

The last couple of years has seen huge advances in 3D printing and Hobarts has been a key player in selling equipment ranging in price from £1,000 to £55,000.

What we do

Our core business areas are:

Machinery

Hobarts sell advanced machinery to education, industry and government. Our educational customers are schools, colleges and universities throughout the UK. Our industrial customers range from small engraving shops to truly global companies and government installations include AWE (Atomic Weapons Establishment), the Home Office, the Royal Air Force, the Royal Navy and the US Air Force.

Lasers
We are the UK’s leading distributor of Universal Laser Systems range of lasers with around 600 systems installed and supported throughout the UK. Increasingly, customers are looking for solutions for their material processing needs. We have gained vast experience working with unusual or exotic materials and more of our work is that of a solutions provider rather than just a provider of systems.

3D printing
We also sell 3D printers such as the 3D UP and the Objet range from 3D Systems and the Leapfrog. More recently, we added the Zinter range to our portfolio.

Extraction
We have gained a great deal of expertise in the field of dust and fume extraction. Working with our partner BOFA International, we developed some truly world class fume extraction systems. Uniquely in our field, our main systems are supplied with VOC monitoring equipment. We absorb this extra cost but do so because we believe that if technology exists that benefits the health and safety of staff and students it should be utilised.

Materials

Hobarts ships out tons of laser-friendly materials every week to every conceivable education and industry sector.

Standard materials
Our range of standard materials for laser processing continues to grow and we ensure that all wood products come from sustainable resources. (see Product Information for more detail on sustainability). Wherever possible, we try to favour UK manufactured products such as Perspex acrylic and Hobarts own acrylic.

Exotic materials
We have gained good expertise working with a number of different advanced materials and how they react when laser cut. Increasingly, this knowledge is being used to help advise our customers how best to process these materials and to advise which machinery they should be buying. Our current database contains over 200 products manufactured by global companies such as 3M, Dupont, Melinex, ProTek etc.

Manufacturing

Hobarts started its manufacturing operation in 1995 and continues to manufacture acrylic sheet and blocks for laser processing and acrylic products for many industrial sectors.

This year, we have set up a bureau service offering to process or manufacture customers’ work. It might be a prototype or it might be an initial production run of a new product. We have many customers in the early stages of setting up their business and need help realising their product before investing in their own machinery.

We are passionate about UK manufacturing and keenly support schemes providing bursaries to students who want to follow a career path in product design and manufacture.

We are aware some customers are experiencing problems when paying via PayPal, our website team are currently investigating this issue. If you experience any difficulties, please select the ‘Invoice Me’ button and we will contact you for payment.

IMPORTANT
We are primarily a business to business website so prices are shown WITHOUT VAT. If you wish to see prices including VAT then please adjust the menu at the top of the page or adjacent to each product.

Search tool
If you don't have time to spend looking around then try our lightning fast product search. For example, type 'red acrylic' into the search box and you will see all the acrylic we stock in red. On the left of the page, the search can be further refined by price, brand or even sheet size.

Shipping
Shipping now starts from £6.95 for 1kg for the UK and from £14.00 for overseas. For more details see the shipping section at the foot of the page